Hanami, the end is near.

Here are the ending lace repeats on Hanami. I am now on the ruffle and should finish today or tomorrow. The plan is to block it on Saturday or Friday night if I have time. That bonus snow day on Friday really pushed me along. Now that I am almost done, I am so sorry to be done. I really enjoyed it once as I got to the Cherry Blossom section.

I don't plan to start another shawl until I finish the Spunky Eclectic Show Your Colors shawl that I also have on the needles. It is triangular and I am on the last stockinette section and then just have a lace section to go on that. Each row seems to take forever which is why I think I put it aside for awhile.

I also have two baby gifts to finish up, one a hat has to be done this week to get wrapped for a shower at work which is supposed to be March 3rd. The other is a baby sweater that really doesn't have to be done till late April or May so I am just knitting it on weekend mornings. I want to finish a felted bag which I started a year ago. It was put aside for other projects. It is the Roll The Dice bag from an issue of Creative Knitting. I only needed to buy one skein of yarn to make it so I thought it would be fun and it used up some stash yarn.

Gust is also on the needles and I try to do a repeat a day on that. It is a fun knit and I am enjoying it a lot.

A Gust, and a Snow Day

Pictured are the first two repeats of Gust. I am now on repeat 7 or 8. I messed up once right after the first two repeats (knit the wrong row) but now have settled into a routine of doing one repeat of Gust (at least) and then working about 10 rows on Hanami every night. I am now reading the knitting better though in a multicolor yarn it isn't always easy. I do plan to make a solid one also. I am going to order Gale today and after seeing Obstacles on Ravelry I am going to pick up that pattern, too. I think I already own most of her patterns already but I have been finding a few that I just didn't pick up yet.

We have a snow day from work so I hope to work on Gust and Hanami today after I get through my emails and bloglines from the past 2 days.

Hanami Transition

This isn't the best picture of the transition and it was taken about a week ago. It is rainy today and I know I won't have much luck getting a better shot. I am now into the 3rd to the last cherry blossom section and by my count, I have less than 100 rows to go.

In other projects, I finished the back of the red baby sweater and that just comes out horrible in photographs. I started the fronts this morning and I work on this a few rows on some nights but mostly weekend mornings.

My work project is the second baby hat for a co-worker. The first was newborn size and this one is 1 year and up. It is almost done and then I don't know what will be my next work project.

I wound the yarn for Gust (By Knitspot) today as I just can't resist after seeing Drop Stitch Knitters http://dropstitchknitter.wordpress.com/ and I have to cast on now. My plan is a multicolor yarn but I have a few solids in the stash that may come after it.

Hanami Progress

Here is Hanami with the Basketweave done. I am now into the Cherry Blossom section and will have to take a picture of the transition and start of the blossoms. It is a fun knit but will get harder now as soon as there are more blossoms emerging. Right now, there are a few straight knit rows that seem to trick me into thinking I am making great progress, then I get a few rows where I have to pay more attention.

I have to start one more baby hat in a larger size that is going to be a gift along with the newborn size that I have already made. I went out with my sister today to the LLBean outlet and bought a few gifts to put away. I am making another co-worker a red sweater and I bought the cutest little red fleece pants to go with it.

I hope to get some more knitting done as I have Monday off. I was supposed to be at a Knitting Spa weekend Sunday night into Monday but I was having a few medical issues and the car tax bill came so I decided not to go. I didn't cancel my vacation day though and we also have the following Monday off for President's Day so I will have two 4 day work weeks to look forward to.

A couple more FO's

The top one is the Karita Scarf by Berocco and that is the only decent picture I can get of it. That is the edge of the scarf. You start with about 4 inches, then the cable, then you knit straight. I knit both sides up to the cable, then just knit them both till I was almost out of yarn and then kitchenered them together. The yarn is Berocco Ultra Alpaca.

The bottom is a baby blanket out of Paton's Canadiana. It is from an old Learn to Knit book that I have had for many, many years. All of my cousins get one when they are expecting. I started making them years ago when I was unemployed and one of my cousins was pregnant. Now they all expect a "Suzi Blanket" when a little one arrives.

I am plugging along on Hanami and have moved into the Cherry Blossoms section. I have a picture of the basketweave that I was going to post but then I finished the blanket so that will get posted in a few days.

I was in NYC yesterday for a meeting at "We Love New York Day". A 3 hour bus ride in, meetings and lunch (Our big boss was an award recipient) more meetings, then a 3 hour bus ride home. It is a free day from work but it gets tiring as I left my house at 6 AM to catch the 6:30 bus we hired and I got back in the house at about 7:50 PM. Traffic was miserable and I don't know if it was worse due to the Giant's parade or just that we were at a different hotel in Manhattan.

Fingerless Mitts FO

These are Fingerless Mitts from Wendy at WendyKnits website. A week or so ago a co-worker (who works at home) was in doing a mailing or something and she asked me about Fingerless Mitts patterns. I told her to look at Wendy's site and to just search for Fingerless Mitts as I found a bunch of free ones on Ravelry and I knew some of them would pop up on a search. She emailed me last week of how much fun she had and then she stopped in to show me what she whipped up. I had been planning to knit a pair for a friend of mine who already received a Multidirectional scarf out of the same yarn and is getting a Last Minute Beret for her birthday this month. So, today instead of working on Hanami all day like I planned, I sat down and knit these up. A quick knit and I was going to try to get them to match but this yarn doesn't always lend itself to that. I made the Palindrome scarf out of another color and the striping would never match up so I didn't even try to get these to match up. I had a slight headache and I know I would have given myself a much larger one by trying to get them to match. I only had one skein left so I just winged it.

I also finished my Karita Scarf (a Berocco free pattern) last week but took about 8 pictures today and they all looked lousy so there is no picture of that yet.